Rachel was tempted to overcome her exhaustion just long enough to give the redhead a good staff jab where it counted.
Before she could, an ear-piercing squawk tore through the blissful quiet somewhere above, far too loud and vicious to have come from any earthly bird.
She snapped her eyes open and glared at Johnny. “You were saying?”
Johnny was scanning the sky with a troubled look on his face. “You think I woulda learned by now, right?”
Beside them, Drogan pointed back the way they’d come from. “Kul’Ahgo.”
“That’s what that thing was called?” Rachel asked, scrambling to sit up.
Drogan shook his head. “That was Kul’Shimo. This is Kul’Ahgo.”
Lea’s whisper of, “Oh my god …” didn’t exactly inspire confidence. And when Rachel came upright on the seat and caught sight of the monstrosity soaring toward them, she kind of wished she’d just stayed down.
To say it was bird-like seemed too mild a descriptor for the viciously long talons and the obscenely thick musculature evident around its wings and neck, even at a distance. The gleaming razor edges at the front of its wings didn’t help either, nor did the long, spear-like beak, or the crimson eyes burning just behind it.
“Can’t catch a break,” Johnny muttered. “Might as well catch a beak.”
Rachel looked at him.
“What?” He gave a little shrug and moved into position to take aim with his rifle from the back of the Humvee. “Would you rather I shit myself every time this happens?”
He took his first shots, eliciting another squawk from Ahgo, who banked off to the left as their Humvee rumbled onto a bridge and under the partial cover of more yellow steel arches.
That cover, it turned out, was even more partial than Rachel thought.
“Do not let his wings touch us,” Drogan said, standing to a ready combat stance beside her as Ahgo came out of his bank and veered around to approach the bridge side-on.
Rachel didn’t have time to ask how the giant bird-thing would manage such a feat before Ahgo soared straight into the side of the bridge.
Steel beams gave way to razor-sharp wings with a chorus of sharp cracks. The Kul flew on, angled and ready to give their Humvee the same treatment.
Rachel pointed her staff and blasted the thing with as much telekinetic force as she could quickly muster.
Kul’Ahgo wavered, but it wasn’t enough.
Then Drogan blurred past her and caught Ahgo in the throat with a flying kick.
The Kul jerked off course, the wing meant for them tearing a deep gouge in the bridge just behind their vehicle. Ahgo smashed into the opposite side of the bridge, warping the steel arch outward.
Drogan, having just kicked a sharp-winged wrecking ball, hit the pavement hard enough to crack it.
“Get him in!” Nelken barked up front.
Johnny leapt out of the slowing Humvee to rush to Drogan’s aid. Lea moved to join, but Drogan was already scrambling to his feet by the time Johnny reached him.
The two jumped back into the vehicle, and the driver hit the gas as Kul’Ahgo began to shake himself off and return to the task of getting them on the wing.
The Kul dove back through the gaps in the girders with an agility that was startling for a creature of his size. Stretched above the water, he threw his razor-tipped wings out and took flight, angling around to come after them as their Humvee cleared the end of the bridge.
“Get us in that tunnel, Williams!” Nelken shouted.
Judging from the engine’s roar of protest, Williams was already coaxing every bit of speed he could out of the poor vehicle.
A quick glance back at the rapidly approaching Kul confirmed it was going to be a close one at best.
Johnny opened fire, but Ahgo wasn’t so easily deterred.
Rachel pointed her staff, readying the energy for another strike, waiting until the last possible moment.
One more second, and—
Blue sky cut to dark concrete overhead, and Rachel began to release her hold on the gathered energy.
They’d made it.
She started to let out a relieved breath then jumped as Ahgo smashed into the tunnel entrance after them.
Hunks of concrete tore from the ceiling and walls and thundered to the ground. The Humvee engine roared. Ahgo gave a high shriek and bounded after them in a string of low, powerful leaps, partially gliding on his half-folded wings.
“You don’t happen to have more charges planted up your sleeve, do ya?” Johnny yelled up to Nelken.
The apprehension in Nelken’s expression as he looked past them to the charging Kul was all the answer any of them needed.
“Right,” Johnny said, turning back to his shooting. “Looks like you’re up then, Lady Zeu—Agh!”
Johnny rolled on top of Lea just in time to avoid taking Ahgo’s lunging beak-thrust straight to the chest. The point of the Kul’s beak punched through the empty seat like tissue paper beside him. Then Drogan grabbed Ahgo by the chitinous beak and punched the Kul square in the side of the head.
Ahgo staggered and, losing pace with the Humvee, swept his beak in a wide, last-ditch attack. Rachel reached out, too late to stop it.
Strong hands yanked her down, Ahgo’s beak whistled by, missing her head by inches, and they all hit the floor in a tangled pile of limbs.
“Rache?”
She looked up from Drogan’s chest, where she’d somehow landed, to find Johnny watching her from his pillow of Lea’s hip.
“Not to be that guy, but I think we’re all gonna die if you don’t drop the roof on this fucker.”
“You can do it, Rachel,” Lea said.
“I believe in you, Rachel Cross,” Drogan added.
Johnny and Rachel both glanced at him in surprise.
His crimson gaze shifted back and forth between them. “Is that not what humans say in hopeless situations?”
Johnny closed his eyes in a pained expression and shook his head.
Rachel just found a humorless grin tugging across her mouth as she took up her staff and stood to face the avian Kul who was quickly regaining his former pace.
Johnny propped himself on the back of the Humvee and resumed fire while Rachel dialed out her cloaking pendant and began to grasp the enormity of her task.
“Well I’m just learning all kinds of new lessons today,” she muttered, climbing onto the rear-facing seats.
Standing tall with a steadying hand on the roll bar, she raised her staff overhead until it lightly grazed along the tunnel’s flat ceiling, jumping and skipping roughly in her tight grip. She closed her eyes, refusing to think about how much power she was about to tap, about the risk of catching them in the fallout, or about anything other than burying Ahgo more thoroughly than even a Kul could hope to survive.
Instead, she sank into her extended senses, casting her will out through the tip of her staff, gathering more energy. And more. More than her body knew what to do with. She bade that body to shut up for a minute, and focused on holding her half-cocked plan so firmly in mind that she almost forgot where she was or why she was doing it.
She remembered all too well, though, when she opened her eyes a hundred yards later and saw the winged monstrosity rushing toward them beneath the long, gently glowing line her staff tip had trailed across the ceiling.
Energy screamed through her body, nearly blinding her, demanding to be released before it tore out of her on its own terms.
So Rachel cocked her staff back, thrust it into the ceiling, and let the energy loose with a scream of her own.
A blinding flash and an enormous cracking sound split the tunnel. Rachel hit the body-strewn floor of the Humvee.
No memory of having fallen. No hope of hanging on.
The unfathomable ocean of channeling fatigue crushed down on her, plunging her into darkness.
8
Jarek was running, but not fast enough. He never would be fast enough. Not to escape the dark shadow of claws and fang
s hounding after him on all fours.
Not to reach Rachel.
She was surrounded up ahead. Close enough to see the fear and the grim defeat on her face and yet somehow too impossibly far away to reach, no matter how hard Jarek pushed his gelatinous legs to move. And, all around her, monsters—unspeakable horrors that corralled her onto a tiny island of stone, unperturbed by the lake of fiery lava they marched through to do so.
Jarek lowered his head and charged along the narrow walkway leading him to Rachel’s island, doing his best to ignore the pool of red-hot molten rock awaiting him should he fall.
He ran, and he ran—squeezing every last ounce of power he could from his legs.
Hot, wreaking breath on his back confirmed it was not enough.
His heart threatened to evacuate his chest.
No time.
Any moment.
Something sharp and unforgiving caught his calf and yanked.
Ahead, Rachel screamed.
“Sir!” Al cried.
Jarek hit the ground hard, moving too fast and too far off balance to take the fall gracefully.
He couldn’t breathe. Diaphragm paralyzed on impact.
The thing behind him yanked again, and then he was on his back, looking straight up into a long muzzle, dripping saliva over a set of vicious looking—
“SIR!”
Jarek snapped awake, adrenaline firing his senses from zero to a hundred as he looked around the ship, expecting to find fangs and crimson eyes coming for him.
There was nothing, save for the flicker of light from the still-playing display screen and the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi screaming at Anakin Skywalker on low volume, “You were the chosen one! It was said that you woul—”
Jarek silenced the movie with a groggily raised hand.
No rakul. No berserkers.
Just …
“Mikey?”
Michael, ambling drunkenly toward the cockpit, made no sign he’d heard Jarek at all. Something about the way he moved made Jarek’s stomach wriggle.
He sat up. “Hey, Mikey, what’s up?”
Al spoke through the cabin speakers. “Sir, I don’t think Michael’s with us at the moment.”
What was that supposed to—
Understanding hit Jarek’s sleep-stained brain like an electric Go switch.
He sprang off the cot to grab Michael, but Al was faster, already stepping Fela into the cockpit doorway to cut Michael off.
Michael didn’t even seem to notice at first—not until he bumped into Fela’s extended hand.
He grunted and pressed forward again. Al held him gently at arm’s length as he continued to seek entry to the cockpit, but there was something off about the whole scene.
“Hey.” Jarek laid a hand on Michael’s shoulder.
On edge as he already was, Jarek didn’t have much trouble ducking the drunken backhand Michael spun around with, nor did he complain when Al stepped in to loop Fela’s arms through Michael’s pits from behind and catch him in a gentle headlock.
Michael squirmed against Al’s hold, and Jarek got his first good look at the younger man’s face.
He was completely expressionless, his struggles more that of a frustrated, disoriented drunkard than a rage-touched furor victim.
It was like he was sleepwalking.
Al held Michael fast as Jarek stepped closer.
He snapped his fingers and gave Michael’s cheeks a pair of light smacks. “Mikey! Hey! C’mon, dude, snap out of it.”
For a brief second, Michael almost seemed to see Jarek through the haze of whatever gripped him. Then it was back to the drunken struggling.
“Dammit. Any ideas what the hell this is, Mr. Robot?”
“A few hypotheses, sir,” Al said, still holding Michael in place with Fela. “Most of which place this thoroughly outside our ability to control.”
“Yeah. Was kinda worried you’d say that.” He frowned at Michael’s expressionless exertions. “You don’t think I went too far with the whole strangling thing, do you?”
“I would argue that brain damage falls well within the category of things we cannot control, sir. But no, I don’t think that’s it.”
“You’re such a helpful robot sometimes.”
“Would you prefer I go back to standby in the corner, sir?”
“Just …” Jarek looked around the room and back at Michael, who, while certainly not at ease, wasn’t actually struggling all that hard. “Just hold on a second. I’ll get the rope.”
Five minutes later, Jarek sat on the cot, suited back up with Fela and watching Michael rock around in the recliner, protesting his new bindings with a string of quiet, discontented murmurs.
“Guess the ship was a good call, huh?”
“Your wisdom, as always, is awe-inspiring, sir. Though I will point out that this still could have ended badly had certain parties not been standing sentry.”
Jarek bobbed his head in agreement, half-lost in thoughts of Rachel and rakul and lakes of lava. “Yeah … You did good Mr. Robot. Thank you.”
“Happy to be of service, sir.”
Jarek turned his attention back to Michael’s waning struggles. “You think he was trying to broadcast our position or something?”
“That seems feasible enough, assuming this is indeed the doing of the rakul and not some coincidentally-timed parasomnia.”
“Easy with the fancy words, buddy. You’re gonna make me miss Pryce.”
“I’ve already been missing him, sir. If I’m to be stuck without Net access, at least I could have a chance at titillating conversation. No offense intended, sir.”
“Offense taken, dick-bot.”
“Clearly I spoke too soon. Eloquence in motion, sir.”
Jarek half-smiled, but it didn’t last long as he watched Michael’s blank expression.
He’d have been lying if he said he hadn’t been missing Pryce too. And Drogan. And Lea. Nelken. The Enochians.
Rachel.
He closed his eyes, resisting the fear that tried to rise up from the darkness inside. The same darkness that had spawned his nightmare.
Yes. He missed them all—would have given a considerable amount to have his friends with him here to help decide how to handle all of this. But they weren’t here.
This was on him, and if he couldn’t figure out a solution to Michael’s problem, their group cohesion out here, dismal as it already was, was going to get a lot worse.
After another ten minutes of weak, discontented struggling, Michael went still. Jarek watched silently for a few minutes, wondering if it was an indication that he might be able to wake the younger man now.
He was just about to get up and try when Michael’s eyelids fluttered open.
For a couple seconds, Michael looked uncertainly around the cabin as if he was trying to establish where he was and what he was doing there. Then his eyes settled on his bindings and took in Jarek watching him.
Michael visibly swallowed. “Not just a dream, then?”
Jarek shook his head.
Michael nodded slowly, his eyes somewhere far away as he turned that information over.
“I can’t stay with the group,” he finally said.
“C’mon, Mikey. Don’t go there. We don’t even know what that was yet.”
Michael gave him a patronized look. “I think we have a pretty good guess. That’s two times in the past twenty-four hours I could have blown everything for us.”
Jarek tried to keep his expression light as tense memories of the passing horde and his tactical strangling act flashed through his mind, whispering that Michael had a damn good point.
“Hey, Al and I have it under control.” He gestured at Michael’s bindings. “Nothing we can’t handle with a bit of rope and some forethought. Unless … I almost don’t wanna ask, but … you don’t think they can tell where you are, do you?”
Michael gave a helpless shrug. “I have no idea. I don’t think so, but … If Rachel was here …”
Heari
ng Michael say the words, the tightness in Jarek’s chest took on a deep ache. Hopelessness crashed down on his brave façade, abrupt and nearly overwhelming. Michael didn’t seem to notice the shift, too wrapped up in his own thoughts.
That was fine by him.
“She always made it sound like she thought the stuff I saw was all one-way,” Michael continued. “Like I was a receiver but couldn’t broadcast myself.”
Jarek nodded. They’d been over this before, and he suddenly wanted little more than to settle this and move on. “Sounds like we’re all good, then.”
“You don’t know that. And even if it were that simple,”—Michael held up his bound hands—“you think Mosen and the rest of them are going to sign off on traveling with a guy who needs to be tied up to keep himself from betraying everyone?”
That was a resounding hell no, but …
“Who said Mosen and the rest of them have to know?”
“Jarek, I don’t think—”
“You wanna know what I think, Mikey? I think we’ve all lost too many people for ten lifetimes. I think I’ll be damned if anyone else is getting left behind. It’s only a couple more days. We’ll crash in the ship, keep you secured during sleeping hours.” Jarek leaned over and laid a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “We’re getting to that rally point together, and then we’re gonna figure out how to fix this thing.”
Michael let out an airy gush that could’ve been a sound of exasperation, strife, or even relief. Maybe all of the above.
They sat in silence for a while, lost in their own thoughts.
“There’s something else,” Michael finally said.
Jarek blew out his own huff of laughter. “There always is, isn’t there?”
Michael didn’t seem to share in his amusement. He kept his eyes fixed on the bulkhead, looking like he didn’t really want to say whatever was on his mind. “That thing just now … I’m pretty sure that was Gada on the other end.”
Jarek straightened at the name, resisting the urge to reach for the shoulder that still ached anytime he exerted himself too much. The shoulder Kul’Gada had torn almost clean through on the tail end of the blow that had sheered his old Whacker.
“What makes you say that?”
Retribution: Book Four of the Harvesters Series Page 7
